So, my hubby got a copy of “The Core: Teaching Your Child the Foundations of Classical Education” by Leigh A. Bortins at the VAHomeschooler’s Conference. When I read the introduction a week ago, I wasn’t too excited. Then tonight, with a lack of options at my side (and a lack of desire to get up), I started chapter 1 and I found something well worth sharing. A good perspective on the present American public school system in the section labeled “Professionalism Replaces Parenting.”

Here’s an excerpt:
“Imagine and impoverished six-year-old boy who rarely gets a healthy meal and rarely has parental supervision. He finally goes to school and falls in love with the first person who has ever been there every day for him–his first-grade teacher…The six-year-old has a daily routine that includes a committed relationship for the very first time…Then the school year ends, and this wonderful teacher says, ‘Good-bye. You will have a great teacher in second grade.’

So the seven-year-old survives the short summer and starts the process over. But now he has a home room teacher, a math and science teacher, a language arts teacher, and a music teacher. Which one is he to fall in love with?…But at least he was physically safe and well fed every day.

And so, by the end of third grade, he hardly notices his teacher because he has formed a strong attachment to the friends who move along from class to class with him. They share multiple hours together daily. Instead of taking his signals of proper behavior from a committed adult, since he has none at home or school, he models his life after the future football captain, just as the girls in his class likely emulate the future prom queen…”

This influence of peers over that of a consistently available and caring adult, is a major contributor to my decision to homeschool. I want my son to have a core group of carefully chosen adults to guide him and teach him not only right from wrong but also share with him their passions. Like mom’s passion for science and gardening, dad’s passion for space and physics or the love we both have for music. I think I was lucky, I actually did strive in the environment of the public school system but I had loving committed parents that spent most of their free time with me and I even joined them at our family business after school rather than go to a daycare or the like. So many kids have 2 full-time working parents with little time left for their kids and so they have so little time with them that it is difficult if not impossible for these parents to have a major influence over their own children. I am lucky, I have a choice but what about those parents that have no choice. Would their kids be better off in a multi-age classroom that doesn’t have a different teacher for every subject and a teacher they keep for years rather than just months? I feel better about my choice to keep my child at home but what about the other kids?